Straight From the Heart of Evansville, by Mary Biever

Christmas Bells

During the Civil War, a husband struggled with the loss of his wife. His first wife died when he was young, and he mourned seven years.

Then he married again. They were a happy family, rejoicing in their five children. His youngest three daughters filled their home with laughter: grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, and Edith with golden hair.

One hot spring day, while her husband slept in the next room, his wife trimmed Edith’s hair. The golden curls were so pretty she decided to save one lock as a keepsake. She used sealing wax to hold the lock of hair into place when tragedy struck.

A spring wind breezed through the room. Her dress burst into flames. Either the sealing wax spilled onto her dress or the match did. Her first instinct was to protect her daughters. So she ran screaming, a tower of flames, into her husband’s study next door. He awakened and tried to save her.

First, he covered her with a rug to smother the flames. The rug was too small. Still, she burned. He threw his arms around her and put out the final flames with his own body.

She died of burns the next morning. He was so badly injured that he could not attend her funeral. His face was so burned that he was never able to shave again and wore a beard the rest of his life.

Her horrific death happened near the beginning of the Civil War. Then his firstborn son, 19, returned from the war, critically injured. Christmas was the hardest. He could not celebrate. The man asked his friends, “Where is peace?”

God gave him solace to his grief on Christmas Day, 1863, as the morning church bells rang.

The mourning husband, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote a poem that would become the carol, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”